Please Please let me get what I want...

Now I'm a huge fan of The Smiths, albeit a fan who was born a few years too late. A Smiths fan who could empty the year 11 common room by putting How Soon is Now? on the communal stereo and still used to ache whenever she listened to that track in her twenties.  A Smiths fan that bought Morrisey's solo stuff even though most of its not as good as The Smiths and Morissey is disappointingly, well, a bit of an idiot left to his own devices. A Smiths fan who turned up a Morissey gig carrying gladioli 15 years too late.

Smiths loving credentials established? Good.  I therefore feel entitled to say how amazing this John Lewis short is about a little boy getting excited about Christmas presents. 

The Boyfriend showed me this on Friday night and by the time we got to the twist at the end I had tears in my eyes. Enjoy.

x

We Need to Talk About...

As you know, I've been looking forward to watching We Need To Talk About Kevin since I first saw the trailer. I know I'm in a minority but for some reason I don't enjoy Lionel Shrivers style so I didn't finish the book but I liked the essential narrative. 

The film shows Eva, living a contrite, pleasureless life. Targeted by local vigilantes, working in a low status job, a figure of hate or curiosity amongst her neighbours.  Flashbacks tell Eva's story of how she ended up this way and why she accepts this as her lot.

Starting as a free spirited, well travelled career woman, Eva does not take well to pregnancy from the start. She is unable to bond with her baby or escape his crying.  She cannot nurture her defiant, incontinent, selective mute little boy. As he grows up Kevin builds on her unease and lives up to her low expectations, constantly goading her, tormenting his innocent younger sister while seeming to connect with his father. Eva is split between nervousness about her son and guilt at the thought she has somehow made him this way.  Over the course of the film, mother and son are in a symbiotic relationship leading up to a mass act of violence.

The cinematography is great.  The soundscape is clever and arresting - the sprinklers are haunting.  There is a repetition of intense red colour schemes throughout the film.  Splatter patterns are repeated. The lead characters mirror each others mannerisms, looks and behaviour.   

Tilda Swinton, John C Reilly and Ezra Miller are all fantastic.  Not to mention the young actors who play the little Kevin's.  Ezra Miller was at the screening last night and the audience really did shrink away from him a bit, although he had folk queuing up to have a fag and a chat as we left.   

This is very definitely a good film and I may even try the book again.  Although I thought it was fantastic and lots of folks will disagree with me, but I didn't love this film. Something about it felt too "deliberate". What do you think?

Recently I've also rather guiltily enjoyed Drive which I didn't think I'd like at all.  We also saw the Black Power Mix Tape as part of the London film festival.  It was great to see some impressive footage - especially the interview with Angela Davis - but somehow it didn't quite seem to hang together.

Weddings and Movie Stars

Its been a quieter more snuggly weekend after a busy week. So I've enjoyed looking through a bit of this coffee table book Weddings and Movie Stars which came out earlier in the year.

As you might remember I have a bit of a thing about old hollywood weddings.  The weddings are obviously glamourous and the dresses are beautiful but there also tends to be something quite simple too about how they celebrated.  There often seem to be smaller numbers of friends and family and many of the weddings take place in registrary offices or city halls. 

I love the book's cover photo of Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart. Apparently when they were pronouced married Lauren clapped her hands and said "Oh goody!"

The book has lots of weddings from the 1920s to the present day, including stills from films as well as real weddings. Its got my favourite shots of Elisabeth Taylor's wedding to Richard Burton, but there others too.

I like this photo from Marlon Brando and Anna Kashfi's wedding.  The story goes that Anna was revealed to be from a Welsh shipping village after claiming to be an Indian princess.    

Love this picture of Frank Sinatra and Ava Garner... 



...And this one of Mick and Biance Jagger leaving Marylebone Town Hall

All in all a gorgeous book and lots of wedding inspiration. We think we may have found our wedding venue - although I'm trying not to jinx it by talking about it yet. I am thinking of starting a regular posting on novice wedding planning though.  I'll be back soon. x

American Graffiti on Chelsea Bridge

When The Boyfriend was 7 his parents took him to the Chelsea Cruise to watch the classic cars drive along Chelsea bridge as a birthday treat.  Watching cars was followed up by a vanilla ice cream sundae with chocolate sauce - the kind of chocolate sauce that goes hard after you pour it so you have to crack it with your spoon to get to the ice cream.  The height of sophistication when you are 7. And one of The Boyfriend's most treasured childhood memories. 

All the wedding planning has got The Boyfriend thinking about cars again.  A 1950's Ford Anglia as a wedding car maybe? An Alfa Romeo Giulietta? What about a Mustang?

After a bit of googling we discovered the Chelsea Cruise is still going, every last Saturday of the month. It stopped for a few years in the 1990's when it got take over by boy racers and got broken up by the police but it is now very much a scene for old car enthusiasts.  So last night we went down. 

Chelsea Bridge was all lit up and looked fantastic as we walked up from the Kings Road.  There were around a hundred cars, mostly for the 50s and 60s.  All amazing shapes and colours and in some cases with spoilers and lights.  My car knowledge isn't very good but The Boyfriend was very excited and knowledgeable about rare cars. The crowds really mixed too. Some staunch enthusiasts who have come every month since the 1970's; families with (mainly) little boys on shoulders, students practicing with their DSLR's, rockabilly types and excitable tourists like us. We may not need a wedding car, but if we do then I think we've found a great place to find advice. 

If you like old cars then I recommend American Graffiti for some inspiration.  Set in 1962 the film is about 2 boys scheduled to leave for college in the morning spending their evening cruising the strip in their cars. There is a young Richard Dreyfuss, Ron Howard and Harrison Ford too. I've only seen this clip so far but looks good and we're watching the DVD tonight.

American Graffiti: George Lucas: 1974

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Pinkie Brown and Nim Chimpsky.

So The Boyfriend and I went to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy tonight. It has had really good reviews so I was looking forward to seeing it and pleased that it lived up to the billing.  Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, an MI6 agent who has been prematurely retired as part of an internal coup. Out of sight, he's tasked by ministers, who are twitchy about their relationship with the Americans, to find a mole at the top of the organisation who is leaking state secrets to the Russians.  

It works as a psychological thriller with Smiley working in the shadows to unpick the loyalties, allegiances and rivalries of the four suspected elite agents. It also works as  a 1970's period piece, from the cars, to the styling, to the office Christmas party.  This also comes through the muted and understated tension through-out the film. There is no sense of contentment or pleasure in the lives the spies lead;  there was a collective laugh in the cinema when one of the younger spies says "I want out. I don't want to end up like you guys".  I missed a couple of bits in the middle - but get the feeling you're supposed to -but by the end the drama wraps together nicely. One of the best films of the year?

Films of the Year

Now the Boyfriend and I often have long discussions on tube and bus journeys about how to rank the films we watch over the course of the year. There is a pretty reasonable chance that my list will change as it very often does.  There are also some films that I'm really looking forward to seeing later in the year like Deep Blue Sea,  We need to talk about Kevin, and Wuthering Heights.  But I thought I'd share my favourites with you now anyway.

Brighton Rock An intelligent, complex film with many emotional layers. Beautifully shot with a score and aesthetic that mimic the screen play. Andrea Riesborough is amazing and luminous.  The film got a panning from the critics and cineastes, principally because it isn't the 1947 version with Richard Attenborough. The Boyfriend and I saw this at a screening with the director, Rowan Joffe, and he looked like he might cry. I have not seen the original and I think this film is sublime.

Project Nim is an incredibly moving documentary about a chimp that was taken from its mother as a baby and raised within a family as part of an experiment into language.  The film is structured like a biography and it includes original footage and interviews.  Although fact based there is a really strong narrative and the unexpected turns in the later parts of the film are dramatic and engaging. 

The cliche with films about animals is that they hold up a mirror to human nature. So in the knowledge that it is cliched I'll say that a lot of the emotion of the film comes from the people responsible for Nim. There is self interest, vanity and cruelty and an identifiable villain.  There are also some unlikely and charming heroes.  Oh and I'm not sure how to say this- the little chimp is unbelievably sweet!

The Kings Speech What can I say? Like everybody else I loved this!

Animal Kingdom I really enjoyed this film.  After his mother dies of a drugs overdose, the lead character, Joshua, moves in with her estranged family of low level gangsters in Melbourne who are involved in armed robberies and drugs running. But rather than a slick glamorous portrayal, the family are grotesque dysfunctionals including a psychotic uncle who has gone underground and a matriarch with an unhealthy relationship with all her sons. The family are fraying at the edges and fraught as the police bear down on them kicking off nervy irrational behaviour.  

The drama comes from Joshua's growing awareness that he's in over his head and his attempts to extricate himself from the family.  James Frecheville who plays Joshua (I had to look that up!) is very natural and gives the character a real naivety.  Guy Pearce is also in it as the chief of police.  It doesn't feel like an obvious role and I like that. 

 

Rise of the Planet of the Apes I watched this not that long after watching Project Nim.  There are quite a lot of parallels which I think may have influenced why I liked it so much.  I love the scene on the bridge. The CGI is terrific.  I'm definitely cheering for the primates.

A Separation is a great Iranian film. It starts with a married couple who are stubbornly splitting up. She wants to move to give her daughter a better life while he wants to stay to care for his elderly father.  Unable to get a divorce or custody of her daughter through the religious courts the wife moves out, hoping that her husband will change his mind.  He employs a housekeeper to take care of his father while he's at work.

However after finding that the housekeeper left his father alone and believing she has stolen from him they have an altercation following which she loses her unborn baby. The film then teases out the differing perspectives on the same event. The separation is literal between the estranged couple but there multiple divides between the experience of rich and poor, men and women, devout and religious liberals. 

I'm not counting any classic films in the list. The Boyfriend and I have previously agreed that this is against the rules of making-lists-of-the-best-films-of-the-year. However if this were not the rule then I'd have included Jaws which we saw at the Roof Top Cinema on a night that it poured down with rain. And we also watched The Big Sleep at the BFI on New Years Day.


Now that I've pinned my colours to the mast I can sense a heated bus journey with The Boyfriend tomorrow.  What do you think is missing from the list?